From: Everette (194cbteng@bellsouth.net)
Date: Sat Jan 21 2006 - 18:44:29 PST
Bat Bombs Away!
Now I know why they call 'em the Greatest Generation. What other group would
have the moxie to turn bats into trained bomb-droppers?
The idea behind World War II's Project X-Ray "was that a bomb-like canister
filled with bats would be dropped from high altitude over the target area,
The bats would be in a sort of hibernation, but as the bomb fell (slowed by
a parachute) they would warm up and awaken."
At the appropriate altitude, the bomb would open and over one thousand bats,
each carrying a tiny time-delay napalm incendiary device, would flutter away
and roost in various nooks and crannies, many of them in extremely flammable
wooden Japanese buildings.
The napalm devices would go off more or less simultaneously, and thousands
of little fires would start at the same time. Many of them would grow into
large fires, and the ability of the Japanese firefighters to contain them
would quickly be overwhelmed...
Seems to me, as outrageous as it sounds, that it could have worked... In
fact, one afternoon while demonstrating the napalm devices, several bats
woke too early in the lab, flew off, and ended up burning down the brand-new
but uninhabited Carlsbad Auxiliary Army Air Base in New Mexico.
As a final test U S Army built a replica Japanese village on the Dugway
Proving Grounds and dropped a "bat bomb", it was a great success, however,
program was cancelled without explanation, shortly before "A" bomb was
dropped..
Everette
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